Comin' On Christmas
by irnan
Summary: Dean's a little lost when it comes to presents.


_This is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** wenchpixie wanted teen!Dean buying Christmas presents, and I am a sucker for awesome prompts, so here it is. Title's from Joni.  
_

**Comin' On Christmas**

OK, so. Yeah. This is gonna be easy, right? Go off without a hitch. Like taking candy from a baby, expect that technically, Dean's _giving_ the candy – which doesn't exist – and the recipient is not meant to be a baby either, cause that would be gross.

Yeah. Easy.

Dean tucks his hands into the pockets of his ratty old jeans and sighs. He's standing just inside the main entrance to the mall, a skinny boy in torn jeans and a too-big jacket. Beside him, people are streaming through the automatic doors and into the beckoning temple of consumerism (what? That's what his teacher calls these places), and compared to the way they're racing joyously towards their favourite shops and cafés, faces bright with seasonal joy and the anticipation of buying their loved ones the best Christmas presents imaginable, Dean looks a little bit like the skeleton at the feast.

It's ridiculous; he's thirteen, for God's sake. Dad says he'll grow out eventually, but by the time eventually arrives, Christmas will have come and gone, the Winchesters will have moved, and Dean will definitely have lost every chance he might have had to score with Rebecca Wilson.

Rebecca Wilson. Never has a girl's name sounded so perfect. Never has a girl been so perfect. She's funny and smart and gorgeous, with long black hair and eyes that are the colour of – of –

OK, so Dean's never actually gotten close enough to her to be able to tell what colour her eyes are. But that's not the point. The point is, he wants to get her something brilliant and wonderful and just right. He wants to get her something perfect.

Girls like perfume, right?

All the shop assistants stare when he shuffles in, squeezing through a build-up of men in their thirties wearing business suits and looking a little desperate. Dean takes no notice of any of them, starting at one end of the shop and working his way through. It doesn't occur to him to try and smell any of the testers because the discreetly horrendous price tags are more than enough to put him off most of them. He edges sideways along the shelves, feeling like a bit of an idiot, and then a hand comes down on his shoulder.

His first thought is _cops!_ but straight ahead of him there's a woman in a long coat and to his left and right glass shelves holding expensive bottles of foul-smelling swamp water or whatever. Anyway, the hand belongs to a shop assistant; she's in her late twenties, red-haired and freckled.

"Hey, honey," she says cheerfully, and Dean stiffens indignantly – does he _look_ like a honey? – "Hey, honey. You lookin' for something for your Mom?"

Dean feels like Tom Harris just punched him in the gut again, like after gym class last week, and he wrenches away from her, ducks between two shelves, and disappears in the sea of suits beyond it.

*********

Definitely not perfume.

Stationary? She scribbles a lot, Rebecca does. Actually, Dean suspects she's drawing, but again, he's never gotten close enough to her to tell. Anyway, he can't imagine _what_ she draws. The classroom? The schoolyard? He doesn't know. But she might like a drawing pad, a real one.

"You mean like for sketching, for artists and stuff?" the guy in the stationary shop says in surprise. "Nah, we don't have any. Mostly we just got pretty crappy office supplies." His mouth twists in wry distaste. "Man, I'll be glad when the semester starts again."

He's forgotten Dean already, wallowing in his own problems. Selfish bastard.

*********

Music! Everybody like music. Right?

Except, Dean realises, standing in front of a rack of tapes, he doesn't recognise any of these people. Well, hardly any. Some of them are hard to get away from, no matter how old you are, but Rebecca probably has all of those, and Dean's beginning to suspect, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that she in turn won't ever have heard of Led Zeppelin, or be able to appreciate the genius that is _Let It Bleed_, or even tell the difference between Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison for all Dean knows.

This trip was a dumb idea, a waste of a bus fare and a pain in the ass. All in all, it was a disaster.

*********

He slouches back home in the cold, berating himself for being an idiot. Rebecca doesn't even know he exists, why is Dean trying to buy her Christmas presents?

Because it might, if he's at all lucky, get her to notice him. That would be...

That would be really nice.

Dad's baking potatoes when Dean gets in. They're sitting in the oven getting brown and crispy, and Dean wraps his hands around a mug of hot chocolate and stares at them without seeing anything.

"So, Boy Wonder," Dad says. "How was your remedial English class?"

Remedial what? Oh yeah. Dean knows what it sounds like, but he had to make up some excuse for being out so late, and he wasn't given much time. The disastrous outing was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment decision.

"It was OK. I think I know what I'm doing with my commas now." And he gives Dad his best and brightest grin.

Dad looks amused. "Your _commas_. Of _course_. You know, I wouldn't have thought a kid who can read _The Lord Of The Rings_ six times cover to cover before he's fourteen would have much trouble with commas, of all things. I mean, that's a pretty weighty book, with some pretty fancy language."

"It is?" Dean says absently. "But everything sounds like that in Latin."

"Dean, all you're doing is proving my point," Dad says. "Where were you this evening? Sammy has a few theories, but I wanna hear it from _you_."

Dean sighs. It's time for drastic measures, he decides.

"Dad," he says, turning to look earnestly up at his father's face, "Dad, look. I don't wanna – I mean, I get why you don't, and I'd get if you didn't say anything or – or anything, but I just really need to know. It's the twentieth, and I really need to know."

Dad looks blank. "OK?" he offers.

Dean draws a breath. "What did you used to get Mom for Christmas?"

"You _what?_" Dad says, and puts his coffee mug down with a sharp thunk. Dean can't read the look on his face at all.

"Mom," he says awkwardly. "For Christmas."

"Dude," Dad says, staring. "Is that – were you – Jesus, Dean. I know I already gave you the Talk, but I was hoping this sorta stuff would wait a while!"

"Um," Dean says.

Dad rubs a hand over his chin. His eyes are really bright, and Dean thinks, from the way his mouth is twisting, that he's trying not to cry. "Next time, just tell me the truth, kiddo," he says.

"Dad, I'm sorry, but presents? Please? What did you get Mom?" He's definitely desperate if he can ignore Dad's quiet reproof like that.

"That Christmas you were three? Um... well. You know, I think you're better off with a _ring_ first than... ah crap. Dean, just... just get her something she'll like. I mean, put some thought into it. Any idiot can get a girl a bunch of flowers. It takes a little more to get her something personal."

Maybe, Dean thinks, the sketchpad was the best idea he had all day.

"Thanks, Dad. Um, the potatoes..."

"Go fetch your brother. I'll take care of 'em."

Dean stands up and slips silently across the room, heading for his and Sammy's bedroom. The little swot is lying across his bed, kicking his heels in the air and doing homework. Dean looks back over his shoulder at Dad for an instant; he's got his arms folded on the table and his head buried in them, shoulders shaking silently. Then he straightens up, propping his chin on his hand, and makes this strangled noise that sounds kinda like a sob, shoulders still shaking.

Dean knew he shouldn't have mentioned Mom. He shuts the bedroom door behind him and jumps on Sam, who promptly hits him with a pillow, and they don't stop shouting and throwing stuff until Dad yells at them to get their asses into the kitchen _now_, please and thank you.

*********

He leaves the sketchpad on Rebecca's seat at school and spends the rest of the day with his fingers crossed.

Nothing happens. When four o'clock rolls around, Dean is more relieved than ever. He weaves through the packed hallways to his locker and starts unpacking his stuff, loading his homework into his bag and dumping all the books he won't need into his locker.

Then, something taps him on the shoulder twice, lightly. Dean jumps and looks up into Rebecca's face. She's holding out a roll of paper to him; it's tied with ribbon and sealed with red wax, like one of the scrolls in Pastor Jim's library.

"Ahm," he says, and isn't that the most eloquent thing to say to the girl of your dreams whom you've never spoken to before?

Rebecca goes bright red. "It's Smaug," she says in a rush. "I saw you reading _The Two Towers_, but I can only really do dragons, so it had to be Smaug, and Merry Christmas and I'll see you soon, and thanks so much for the sketchpad , it's the awesomest thing I'll get this year, I know it."

And she turns around and rushes off before Dean can get a word in edgewise.

He stands up, cradling the precious roll of paper to his chest, and yells down the corridor after her.

"Thank you!"

She turns and waves, and then darts out the doors into the cold winter sunlight. Dean starts to grin like an idiot, and doesn't stop till he gets home and Dad tells him, quiet and regretful but definite, that they'll be leaving town by the end of January.


End file.
